The Berrics and Gatorade Team Up Again for Steadicam Motion Control Skate Ad 'Keep Going'

Hit upon an effective ad concept and there's always going to be a temptation to simply repeat yourself in future outings, so The Berrics and Gatorade are to be commended for stepping their collaboration up in the sequel to last year's well received 'single shot' ad Play All Day with the technically ambitious spot Keep Going:

The new ad once again features professional skater Chaz Ortiz, this time skating through a series of tricks in his purpose-built skate park. As director Colin Kennedy and his crew knew they'd only gain access to the location on the first day of the 3-day shoot (1-day setup 2-days filming), meticulous pre-production planning took on an even more significant role. Kennedy and VFX Supervisor at Ring of Fire John Myers worked from plans of the skate park to measure out the space they'd have at their disposal in order to design the visual effect of multiple skating Ortizs, which was to be the driver of the steadicam-motion control shot. Ortiz was instructed to hit certain marks around the park, with a camera controlled metronome dictating timing, but the detail of what to specifically pull out of his skating repertoire was left to his interpretation. You can get a feel for how things were set up in this behind the scenes video.

In case you missed it first time around here's Go All Day, the film that kicked things off:

Which was also came with its own behind the scenes video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Eud1asF0RA

Although there haven't been any official announcements from the partnership, as Ortiz finishes up at his skate park at 9:26pm, that definitely leaves a decent chunk of time for him to hit the streets for a third instalment of night skating.

Is that something you'd like to see or have the team already stretched the concept to its limit?

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7 Comments

I've been working in this past year with a lot of traveling shots using steadycams, and as Steve Berra was saying, the most difficult part is to coordinate each movement with actors and pacing and the flow of the shot. One error and u gotta start all over again. My hats off to the 1AD, like myself sometimes, for coordinating every single movement, but obviously to Colin and Steve for creating this master piece.

And a big applause to Chaz, he's the man, what a nice set of tricks he pulled here.

Thanks to NFS for adding the behind the scenes, always a good way to know how other people is approaching their goals.

Praise to all involved for pulling this off. Doing this means ev-e-ry-thing has to be choreographed! I'm curious to know how they got the camera (on steadycam) in the exact same poistion as the timelapse section of the movie.

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